Thought I would start up a thread specifically for stuff that YOU would like us to cover on the CountDown shows for TechEd NA. You can also leave comments and suggestions as well as shout out some questions to us as well.

Hey everyone! Here is the link to the entire series of countdown shows last year. http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/The-Countdown-Show Note that this contains videos for both North America and Europe. We plan on doing some fun things again this year. Stay tuned!!!

Can you do a segment on what the TechEd experience is like from a Noob's perspective? Where to go from arrival at the conference center, how to get the inside track, best practices on managing the schedule. Someone mentioned double booking sessions in case the ones you want are full, maybe explain what that is about.

If you have already done any of this pointing me to the like would be Super Green!!

Once the session builder goes online you will often find that you have several sessions that occur at the same time. Don't worry about only picking one choose both or more if your interested in the topics being covered. It not only help you plan out what your going to focus on but it also helps out the conference organizers plan out the room size, and if they get enough they may add in repeat sessions. Signing up for a session does commit you to going to the session and the signup is not a first come first served.

I spend a bit of time on this and I do review my session list several times before the conference starts. When I get to the conference on Sunday I take my conference guide and highlight my sessions, and also find myself reviewing my list every morning (and sometime several times a day). Be prepared to change up at last minute, you may have gone to a session earlier in the week and got very excited about what you heard and now want to know more so change it up. There is a lot of content so try to make the most of it for the best experience possible.

Booking extra sessions not only in case a the session is full, but you may get into a session and find out it was not for you, so you can get up and go to another one, but if you go and are not sure it is best to sit nearer to the door. One other item about booking extra, is the sessions are recorded and available online, usually within 24 hrs, so you can watch the ones you decided not to attend later.

The New Orleans conference center is a large one and there is a lot of walking involved. So getting to know the conference layout and where your sessions is being held is important. If you can, register on Sunday and check out the place so you know where everything is. This will help as when you have session at one end of conference and next session is 3rd floor at the other end, you will want to start walking that way soon as you can, sometimes the halls can get crowded and it can take what seems like 10-15 min to get from one end to other.

I always get in to register on the Sunday so I can also take the time to do a few Hands on Labs (these will be listed in the Session catalog when it goes live), and check out whats new before I hear the talks.

No one has mentioned if this is going to be one again this year, but last year they had a few TechEd 101 sessions on the Sunday, one of my colleagues went last year and really enjoyed it and got some useful tips .

Thanks for the info. I plan on hitting the ground running. I have a Pre-Con lecture from 9am to 5pm on Sunday, but there are other things going on that I would like to get involved with that day as well (labs, etc). I plan to arrive on Friday or Saturday to orient myself before the events begin. The Pre-Con I am after is 0 to DAX (I'm working on some BI reports), but that hacker one for sys admins is looking pretty good! Do you know if there will be a chance to do registration stuff before the Pre-Con sessions on Sunday? I hope the Pre-Con stuff is available on-line as well.

I don't think any of the pre-cons are recorded and available online. I myself have never attended the pre-cons, so cannot tell you how much time you will have to get other things done. Those that I know who have gone say it is a pretty full day.

As for registration, those registered for a pre-con get their TechEd registration done earlier on the Sunday the rest of the attendees. We cannot register till around 10:00 or 11:00 am on Sunday. According the schedule Hand-on -labs are open from 12 - 6pm and I think most take around around 45 min to complete.

But you should take some time to regroup before going to #theKrewe meet-n-greet Sunday night.

My plane is supposed to hit the ground in New Orleans Sun at 2:00ish and will go from the airport, to hotel, to convention center to get registered in and from there, I've no idea. This is both my first TechEd and first real conference beyond just local area software release conferences.

The closer it gets to convention time the more over my head I'm feeling so just going to play it by ear and hope to figure things out as I go.